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Topic: We Are the Idiots (Read 12120 times)

This article could fit into several different places in the forum, so I'm putting it in it's own topic. This is another column from one of my favorites. Hopefully it will get you to thinking....

Spoiler

A MINORITY VIEW

BY WALTER E. WILLIAMS

RELEASE: WEDNESDAY, MAY 22, 2013

We Are the Idiots

Dr. Henry Miller, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Gregory Conko, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, in their Forbes article “Rachel Carson’s Deadly Fantasies” (9/5/2012), wrote that her 1962 book, "Silent Spring,” led to a world ban on DDT use. The DDT ban was responsible for the loss of “tens of millions of human lives -- mostly children in poor, tropical countries -- have been traded for the possibility of slightly improved fertility in raptors (birds). This remains one of the monumental human tragedies of the last century.” DDT presents no harm to humans and, when used properly, poses no environmental threat. In 1970, a committee of the National Academy of Sciences wrote: "To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT. ... In a little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths, due to malaria, that otherwise would have been inevitable." Prior to the DDT ban, malaria was on the verge of extinction in some countries.

The World Health Organization estimates that malaria infects at least 200 million people, of which more than a half-million die, each year. Most malaria victims are African children. People who support the DDT ban are complicit in the deaths of tens of millions of Africans and Southeast Asians. Philanthropist Bill Gates is raising money for millions of mosquito nets, but to keep his environmentalist credentials, the last thing that he’d advocate is DDT use. Remarkably, black congressmen share his vision.

Wackoism didn’t end with Carson’s death. Dr. Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist, in his 1968 best-selling book, "The Population Bomb," predicted major food shortages in the United States and that “in the 1970s ... hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.” Ehrlich saw England in more desperate straits, saying, “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” On the first Earth Day, in 1970, Ehrlich warned: “In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish.” Ehrlich continues to be a media and academic favorite.

Then there are governmental wacko teachings. In 1914, the U.S. Bureau of Mines predicted our oil reserves would last 10 years. In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior revised the estimate, saying that American oil would last 13 years. In 1972, the Club of Rome's report "Limits to Growth" said total world oil reserves totaled 550 billion barrels. With that report in hand, then-President Jimmy Carter said, "We could use up all proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade." He added, “The oil and natural gas we rely on for 75 percent of our energy are running out.” As for Carter’s running-out-of-oil prediction, a recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office and private industry experts estimate that if even half of the oil bound up in the Green River formation in Utah, Wyoming and Colorado is recovered, it would be "equal to the entire world's proven oil reserves." That’s an estimated 3 trillion barrels, more than what OPEC has in reserve. Fret not. Carter, like Ehrlich, is still brought before the media for his opinion.

Our continued acceptance of environmentalist manipulation, lies and fear-mongering has led Congress to establish deadly public policies in the name of saving energy -- such as Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, which downsize autos and cause unnecessary highway fatalities. That’s on top of the stupid 1970s 55 mph laws. The next time an environmentalist warns us of a pending disaster or that we are running out of something, we ought to ask: When was the last time a prediction of yours was right? Some people are inclined to call these people idiots. That’s wrong. They have been successful in their agenda. It’s we who are the idiots for listening to them and allowing Congress to let them have their way.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

Yes, we are the idiots.On the subject of insect control and DDT:If fly spray has chemicals in it that are apparently fatally toxic to insects and potentially toxic to humans to some degree, and if the same is true of DDT, then I would not want either substance in my environment. They are potentially hazardous. For this reason I would NOT recommend spraying fly spray or DDT around the home and I would avoid exposing my family to either of these toxins/poisons.

The usual risks from toxins are typically:(a) unknown direct harm (e.g., including cancer or organ damage) to the individuals exposed to them;

(b) unknown harm to the structure of their genes or chromosomes or reproductive functions, resulting in sterility or abnormalities - e.g., deformities or retardation - in their children.

Given these risks, to expose yourself or oblige your family to be exposed (especially without their choice) to such toxins would seem to be irresponsible if not reprehensible.

However, I would not see my risk-averse choice (above) as mandating that we ban the use of fly spray and I can't see why we should treat DDT any differently. I had never quite understood what was so 'bad' about DDT. In other words, why was it banned and not other insecticides? If DDT was indeed banned largely because of statements made in a book written for profit, then would that be a rational and scientific approach to the perceived problem? It doesn't seem to be rational.

What I would be VERY wary of is any manufacturer lobby insisting that their products were "safe" according to research sponsored by them. For example, asbestos manufacturers, cigarette manufacturers, DDT manufacturers, GM corn manufacturers - the list would be long.

An interesting green eco-fascist idea has recently been resurrected, viz:

Instead of being obsessed with killing insects, why not consume insects? Thus controlling the insect population and enjoying a varied diet with more protein.Perhaps insects could be ground up like herbs and spices and used to flavour "exotic" dishes. Insects would have less fat than meat and more likely be better for your digestive system (this is a purely speculative conclusion of course). I can find no research to suggest that consuming large quantities of insects is linked to bowel cancer - unlike consuming red meat. Perhaps you could mash up insects and make a "all insect pattie" - rather like the new angus burger at McDonalds.Perhaps flies have health properties when ingested, perhaps they could be marketed as the new "super oil" (like omega 3 fish oils). Imagine that!

However, I suspect that that website in particular would be unlikely to be able to provide a balanced view of any pesticide/insecticide, as it has pretty clearly stated beliefs and objectives for a UK free of the use of pesticides, and seems to refer to the Pan-god, which has religious overtones.

As a keen environmentalist, I have, over the years, used DDT and read up a heck of a lot on the subject of this and other man-made toxins. My reading and the instructions on the DDT packets pointed out that DDT was safe to use, but only as long as it was used with care.

The book Silent Spring (1962) merely suggested that DDT and other pesticides may cause cancer and that their agricultural use was a threat to wildlife, particularly birds.It offered no scientific proof - which is why the UK and USAID continued to use the stuff until 1984 and later, and until it became politically incorrect to continue to use it - i.e., not scientifically incorrect.DDT was regarded as being as harmless (i.e., "mildly hazardous") to humans as the plant-based Derris Dust (rotenone), which latter is still sold by Yates today as an "organically permissible" pesticide - though some countries have banned it for "organic" status as a result of its modern "politically incorrect" status.

Whilst it might feel satisfying to talk humourously about using insects as a source of food flavouring or protein, we need to acknowledge that many countries do in fact already use insects for just such purposes. For example, in Thailand, where one of the delicacies in the rice-farming areas is an iridescent green-backed flying beetle that is a particular favourite amongst children and adults alike. The Thais catch them with lamps that attract the beetles at night, and the beatles fall off the lamps into a bucket of water below. My daughter Lily loves to eat them. Having eaten them myself - as well as other insects - I have to say that I don't find them particularly tasty and cannot see what all the fuss is about.

"Each year, there are approximately 350–500 million cases of malaria, killing between one and three million people, the majority of whom are young children in sub-Saharan Africa."

After it had been discovered during the second half of World War II that DDT enabled real control of malaria and typhus amongst civilians and troops, DDT was used extensively and had almost eradicated malaria in some parts of the world. When it ceased to be used, the malaria came back, so millions of people - mostly children - had to die each year again.

Now try telling those children as they lie dying, and their families, that this massive scale of death is justified because some Westerners think that DDT is bad for them.That may be only half the story of the use of DDT. The other half would be in its use as a highly effective crop pesticide.It is thus easy to understand why the Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Müller was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1948:

"for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contact poison against several arthropods."

All this may not stop you from continuing to try to justify your pumping known toxic pesticides (fly spray chemicals) into your own household environments - toxins that merely kill an annoying pest (household flies). Of course, you would do this through freedom of choice.

We in the western civilisations are fortunate in that we will not have to watch our children die of malaria by the millions. You can be sure that if they did start to die of it, then we would rapidly deploy DDT or invent some even more effective malarial control. We are already using crop herbicides, crop pesticides and animal pesticides by the mega-tons, and genetically modified seed which is resistant to these chemicals, which is one reason why we can produce more than enough food for our needs.

The majority of people affected by malaria are those living in poverty and do not have a choice. Malaria effectively aggravates the state of poverty - which is the world's biggest killer and the greatest cause of ill-health and suffering across the globe. It is listed almost at the end of the WHO International Classification of Diseases. It is given the code Z59.5 - extreme poverty. DDT is one of the few things that has made any major dent in the statistics for global poverty and its associated human misery, and yet it has been pushed aside because it was made politically (not scientifically) incorrect by the book "The Silent Spring" (1962).

Just as a rough estimate, let's suppose that since (say) 1970, DDT ceased to be used (was banned for use) to control malaria, and that (say) at least 1.5million children died from malaria each year since then as a result. That's approx 40 years and 60 million dead children to date.We could perhaps argue about precise numbers, but this estimate helps us to get the general idea of the scale of the thing.

So, this estimated 60 million children were apparently sentenced to die from what could have been an otherwise avoidable disease - malaria. The only reason those children were sentenced to die was because they suffered from another disease - Z59.5 (extreme poverty). Because they were children and had Z59.5, they had no franchise - no voice - in the arbitrary decision made by wealthy western nations to withhold the only known defence that could have saved them - DDT. We committed those 60 million children to death, and we currently commit somewhere between 1.5 and 3.0 million more children to death each year by the same means.

That 60 million is a staggering number of children to kill by default, made all the more worse a crime because it continues and may have been because DDT became politically unacceptable due to a fascist green whim regarding DDT and because someone wanted to write a best-selling book based on insubstantial scientific evidence.

If the Wikipedia and other balanced articles are anything to go by, then we should not forget that it is apparently acknowledged that not only was the case against DDT far from being categorically scientifically proven at the time the book was published, but also a substantive part of that case still remains to be proved. We have apparently become and continue to be mass murderers through our own passivity and ignorance and now including from our belief in the relatively new religion of greenie.

It is our beliefs that are become fatal to so many others, coupled with our avoidance - even hatred - of anything which might test or contradict that belief. This is a fascistic religion where the belief, dogma and religio-political ideology are more important than, and come at the cost of, the deaths of millions of innocent children.

If we:

(a) have withheld DDT from these innocents, thereby ensuring their deaths in the millions each year;

(b) have done this because we believed we were right to do so and that somehow this would save even more lives in our societies ("for the greater good");

It isn't banned in India. Our neighbourhood gets sprayed with DDT every few months. IMO, a little education and stricter implementation of municipal laws would go a long way in preventing mosquitos and related diseases in cities like Mumbai. A large chunk of our population behave no better than animals.

Yes, we are the idiots.On the subject of insect control and DDT:If fly spray has chemicals in it that are apparently fatally toxic to insects and potentially toxic to humans to some degree, and if the same is true of DDT, then I would not want either substance in my environment. They are potentially hazardous. For this reason I would NOT recommend spraying fly spray or DDT around the home and I would avoid exposing my family to either of these toxins/poisons.

Well written IanB, and a lot of good examples too. As far as eating insects, while they may be healthier than, say red meat, insects carry diseases too. No way in hell would I eat a fly. I see them on dog turds and dead things all the time. yuck! Some people eat grasshoppers and crickets, but both of those insects have been known to carry tapeworms. As for fly spray, I found out something very interesting in the Air Force.... Fly spray is the EXACT same thing as nerve agents used in chemical warfare, it's just watered down. It acts on insects the same way it works on humans, attaches to nerves in your body and interrupts them, causing "The Jerks" and eventually death. Ever see a bug after it's been sprayed? On it's back with it's legs spastically twitching and then curling up into muscular contractions? The same thing happens with humans. Not a good way to go.

So DDT smells like kerosene? Hopefully not. i used to follow the fogger trucks on my bicycle... huffin. That mild kerosene smell was great.Don't know what they use these days but it's invisable and unscented.

It had it's own smell. Not really like any other that I could think of. Not unpleasant anyway. Not like Derris Dust, which smelt sweet but a bit acrid. As a boy I used to treat our dogs with Derris Dust, and that had its own smell - I would probably recognise it if I smelt it again. Not sure I would recognise DDT though, which I only got a whiff of a couple of times.DDT was bloody effective - if I just put some around the entrance hole to a wasp's nest at night (so they had to trample in it as they came in and out), then they'd be wiped out in about 12 hours.

The book Silent Spring (1962) merely suggested that DDT and other pesticides may cause cancer and that their agricultural use was a threat to wildlife, particularly birds.It offered no scientific proof - which is why the UK and USAID continued to use the stuff until 1984 and later, and until it became politically incorrect to continue to use it - i.e., not scientifically incorrect.

I'd chalk at least some of that up to the relative innocence of most civilians in America at the time. There was a good deal more trust in the FDA and other government agencies to safeguard the general public without regard to financial inducements or political interference back then. It was also coupled to the firm belief that should such interference be discovered, it would also be firmly and swiftly be dealt with - and corrected.

There was also the general belief that American businesses had the best interests of Americans at heart. To do something deliberately harmful to people was almost inconceivable to most people. Sure, there were the bad old days back at the beginning and turn of the century. But didn't those New Deal agencies and legislation put that nonsense to bed once and for all? With the government, the unions, and the "men of goodwill" at the helm of American business - why should we be worried? This was America! Land of the Free! And we were all working together to keep it so.

Ahh...those were the days.

I think Rachel Carson didn't think to independently test her claims because she didn't think she would have to. By sounding the warning she (like most people at the time) likely assumed that the government would step in and quickly get to the bottom of it. Or if not, the manufacturers of DDT would rapidly mend their ways.

Like I said, not so much idiocy in her case. We were all Americans, with a good government and responsible businesses running the show, after all. That was more a case of our innocence I think. Or naivety if you want to be uncharitable.

But what followed after wasn't idiocy either. It was flat out lying and criminal stonewalling and political pressuring until the situation became too difficult to spin and the powers that be were forced to take action. Which they did in a minimalist manner that allowed parties responsible to escape culpability, prosecution, or punishment.

And please remember many were implicated. Uncle Sam himself via the USDA had blessed off on it. Jails routinely sprayed or generously dusted incoming prisoners with DDT as a"delousing" measure. Farmers sometimes dusted fields that were loaded with farm workers. Even schools would quickly send a janitor in to spy insecticide (in a classroom full of kids) the minute any ants or roaches were spotted by the windows or trashbins. Nobody was worried. We kids thought that weird odor that hung in the air for the rest of the day was just something to make jokes about. Those kids who got a headache or felt ill were merely told to "sit quietly by the window for a few minutes." And those unfortunates were bound to be ragged on as "sissy" and "candy ass" for days to follow. The same attitude surrounded all the other harmful aerosols my generation was exposed to growing up. (The 50s and 60s were the golden age for aerosol manufacturers.)

So yes, perhaps idiocy. But mainly in retrospect if you want to be completely fair when tossing "we" around so freely.

We Are the IdiotsWe Are the IdiotsWe Are the Idiots

-----------------------------re: smell

It was not really much like anything else IIRC. It had a heady perfumey but still noticeably "chemical" odor. It was probably added to make it a little more appealing. Once you got a whiff however, you immediately tagged it as insecticide! forevermore. Which also might have been part of the plan. It was a very persistent odor however. Good for at least an hour or more depending on how heavy-handed the application was.

So what are we using now? I always thought it was Malathion. But I don't know where I got that information.

I remember Silent Spring being pushed by teachers in all 4 years of high school. A big deal was made about automobile emissions which eventually led to computerized ignition systems in cars(as environmental concerns became more general.) I still don't think the expense was justified. Of course once the computers are a given you can add on safety features. But there's no reason a points plugs and condenser ignition can't operate a clean running car.

No reason they couldn't. But they usually didn't really. They were manual systems engineered to "good enough" standards. Usually as little as the law would allow. And they either had had no - or no reliable - feedback mechanisms or fault self-correcting capabilities.

Whenever you have a system that needs time and/or money to maintain optimal performance, said maintenance doesn't get done.

Prior to the advent of fuel injection, it was amazing what many people would put up with (stall-outs, backfiring, etc.) as long as their car still started up and stayed running. The fact it required some voodoo starting procedure or idled rough, and always had this weird foul smelling cloud following it around town, made no difference. It wasn't against the law back then. And it was sure better than surrendering your car for a day or two to your local garage mechanic. And then gritting your teeth while waiting for that always larger than expected bill you'd need to pay to get it back. No wonder people put off maintenance as long as possible. And the gravity well of "good enough" is inescapable if people have to actively do something (or pay additional money) to get something better.

Enter fuel injection. The chip and firmware handles everything. Add that to modern materials and engineering and now you average far better mileage, reliability, and engine life than you did with an old car. The fact cars routinely hit a 250K+ mile useful service life would have been inconceivable in the 60s and 70s. Hitting 70K was a milestone. Rolling the odometer over at 100K was a major life event. The big difference today is that while cars generally need to be fixed far less often than they used to, they're significantly more expensive to fix when they do.

It's a trade-off. But I think we can all mostly agree today's cars are far better and more reliable than the classic models used to be.

I used to do semiannual auto inspections with emissions tests. An electronic ignition was not required. Just a clean exhaust. Distributor maintenance could just as easily have been mandated. The parts and labor are no more expensive than screwing around with the fuel mixture as was done then. Usually in minor tune-ups the expensive parts are the plugs. They didn't need to be changed on every tune-up. But the shops made their money on them and it was quick work. Every 2 years new plugs would be more than adequate.

The electronic systems added to cars was a hell of an expense just so the distributor could be ignored, other than setting the base timing, during tune-ups. You could buy a lot of points, rotors, condensors and labor for one of those Chrysler air cleaner housing computers. Not to mention the fact that "lean burn" burns up your system by running at high temperatures instead of just tuning the fuel mixture. It's kind of like amputating the horse's legs to make sure he doesn't break one.

Because they are not Chrysler lean burn engines is my conjecture. I'm talking about lean burn back in the day. It ran too hot just because that tended to reduce the escape of raw fuel. Kill the dog to spite the fleas technology.

That's an easy one ... They don't. An engine is an engine, the major parts are still the same. Sure, some advances have been made in the materials they are made out of...(valve seats come to mind)...but they're not always used to the best effect (Like aluminum heads..).

Only real difference is the computer now compensates for anything that happens to wander out of spec, which allows the user to remain blithely ignorant of how badly the vehicle is actually running. So when it does finally start flashing the Check Engine light...you can pretty much be guaranteed you'll be bending over to the tune of something in the $1,000 range. Mainly due to the fact that they are designed using the 10lb of shit in a 2lb bag/planned obsolescence school of engineering ... So nothing under the hood is ever easy to get to.

Not to mention that the realistic average life expectance of a modern vehicle - outside of Subaru commercials and fantasy land - is still just slightly north of 100,000 miles...just like it always was. Above that the suspension, steering, and other chassis components are going to be dangerously shot to hell regardless of how gingerly you wasted the time of everyone behind you babying the hell out of the engine.